Book Review: The Meadowbrook Murders by Jessica Goodman
A boarding school murder mystery with an unlikely duo, check out my full review of The Meadowbrook Murders by Jessica Goodman below!
Book Information
Everything changes for Amy when she wakes up in her dorm room to find her best friend, Sarah, and Sarah’s boyfriend murdered. Now, not only is she a suspect, but she is ostracized from her friend group.
Liz Charles knows that these grisly murders are the best thing that could happen to her since her dreams revolve around becoming a journalist. When they move Amy into Liz’s room, it can’t get any better. But Liz learns a lot about what good journalism is and how it can impact everyone around her, especially Amy.
Together, they’ll try to solve the murders if only to bring justice to their school.
Review | Heidi Dischler
So, I’m going to be honest here: I wasn’t really crazy about this book. Was it bad? No. Was it blow-my-mind-amazing? Definitely not. I think the story set up is solid, but the characters didn’t feel fully developed and the plot was lackluster in my opinion.
With the characters, I could find myself mixing up Liz and Amy. If their names weren’t at the top of the chapters, I would’ve had a hard time telling them apart at times, which is not great when you have two POVs. You literally get to know nothing about Ryan (Sarah’s murdered boyfriend) even though the book preaches about learning more than just how the victims were killed and getting to know them as people. Most of the other characters were very one-dimensional and I think that’s what pulled me out of the book the most.
As far as plot goes, it felt cohesive for the most part, but was predictable about 50% of the way through. I won’t give any spoilers, but I definitely had a feeling about who was the perpetrator a good bit before we get any closure. Most of the things the drove the mystery forward, though, were circumstantial and sometimes seemed random. That bothers me more than anything else when it comes to mystery novels. I don’t want it to be a coincidence and I don’t want characters to happen upon things. I want them to work for it and this novel didn’t really feel like work.
Okay, so the things I enjoyed. I loved the boarding school vibes you get throughout the whole novel. I also love the hostility (I know, this sounds weird with me saying that I like that) because it totally felt “high school”. The atmosphere was on point for sure. I also enjoyed the ending after our murderer was unmasked. It felt nice and realistic (not necessarily the explanation from the murderer, but what our characters do after everything is all said and done).
Overall, I would give it a solid 3/5 stars. The ending was predictable with who the murderer was and the characters didn’t feel fully thought out, but the vibes, atmosphere, and writing for the novel were really good.
Source: ARC from NetGalley
(P.S. You can read this book for free by signing up for a free trial of Audible, which gives you two free audiobooks of your choice!)
